Since I shared my hiking checklist I thought I’d also share my always-a-work-in-progress drone pre-flight checklist. Not every question on this applies to every single situation and some of these rules you may be willing to bend or break depending on the circumstances. But, having a checklist may help to reduce the number of mistakes you may make.
- Are batteries in drone fully charged?
- Are batteries in controller fully charged?
- Are batteries in phones or tablets fully charged?
- Are the drone’s props in good repair?
- Are the drone’s props fully secured?
- Am I near anything that could cause signal interference; lots of metal, radio towers, buildings?
- Will I have line-of-sight for my entire flight?
- Do I have the maps of the area I’ll be flying downloaded to my device?
- Would it be good to have a spotter keep an eye on my drone while I look at the video output?
- Are my camera settings set for the video or photos that I’d like to take during this flight?
- Is the memory card empty?
- Is the area I am flying legal?
- Is the wind speed safe?
- Is there any precipitation expected in the area during your flight time?
- Check all settings in your app are what you’d prefer for your flight.
- Have I unfastened the gimbal?
- How high do I need to fly for my entire flight path in order to be safe?
- Can I possibly get closer to my target area before taking off?
- If something goes wrong, do I have a second landing area that I could possibly go to?
- Is the area between my landing zone and my target an area I can access?
- Will I be flying over private property or can I avoid that?
These simple checks can, perhaps, save you from making a mistake that could cost you a lot of money or battery time or frustration.
